5 Times Bart Draws Jaime
by RebelzHeart
Summary: And one time that he can't.
1. Chapter 1

There's something strange about the weird, blank book that Jaime puts in front of him with the grumble of "If you're going to keep moving your fingers like that, at least do something that doesn't make as much noise", and Bart stares at it for a long time.

"Is this like... a notebook without lines?" He asks hesitantly, wrinkling his nose. It's possible that notebooks are only meant for young children to use, guided lines for shaky hands that can't yet properly like, and then adults graduate to using these blank books once their writing is neat, but it seems so... counterproductive. "I don't understand. Wouldn't it be better for everyone to keep the lines so that the writing is always neat? It makes writing reports more consistent because of the size of the letters and..."

Jaime, for his part, waits patiently until Bart is done babbling about the impracticality of it before speaking, already knowing that he has to wait Bart out before speaking.

"It's not a notebook," he says as soon as Bart's done speaking. There's something that lies somewhere between amused and sad in his voice, the same way that it always does when Bart gets confused by the past. "It's a sketchbook. Made for drawing?"

Bart nibbles on his lower lip, "...Drawing?"

"Yeah, you know," Jaime frowns. He hadn't expected to need to explain this, "That, uh, that thing that you did, where you created that picture of yourself on the ground? But instead of on the ground, it's on paper, and instead of me flying up to see it, anyone can just look at the paper."

"Oh, but that was little," Bart shoves his hands in his pockets, a bit bashful as he shrugs, "I mean, that was silly. You know? Like, it's kind of pointless to make a picture like that when there's work to do. And cameras with photos..." he makes a little clicky motion with his fingers, "...they're much for efficient. That kind of stuff isn't very productive."

Jaime frowns, "Well, maybe in the future. But right now, it's just for drawing."

" _Just_ for drawing?" Bart's eyes light up a bit, "Like, just for drawing? And everyone is cool with it? _How_?"

Jaime laughed. _There_ was the reaction that he had been waiting for, bright eyes and a wide smile. "Art is considered a normal hobby, tons of people love it. You can use a lot of mediums. Paint, pencil, pens, it's up to you, really."

" _Crash_ ," Bart breathes, awestruck, "So crash. Oh man, oh man... I've got to try it out. Do you have a, um," Jaime held up a Flash-themed mechanical pencil, "Oh that is _so_ crash, thisisawesomeIloveitalreadyeventhoughIhaven'ttrieditand..."

"Breath, hermano," Jaime advised as Bart flipped the sketchbook open. "I know that it's a great gift and all but..."

Bart tacked Jaime into a hug, "It is, it's great, I love it!" He zipped around the room in a blur of colour, before stopping nose to nose with Jaime. (Well, almost nose to nose. Jaime was a bit taller, so Bart had to look up, making a nose to nose stare a bit difficult.) "Hmm." He zipped a bit again, then returned to Jaime. " _Hrmm_."

"The speedster appears to be analyzing the room and you as a target," Scarab says, "I recommend interrogation through physical torture."

"Are you serious, ese?" Jaime murmurs. The Scarab has taken to joking and it's a twitch unsettling.

"Totally serious, my dude," Bart finger guns at Jaime, beaming, "Can I draw you? I'll be super fast, promise."

As though to prove his point, he starts going through his art in a series of blurs for about half a second before the paper starts smoking.

Bart shrieks and immediately drops the paper, leaving Jaime to start stomping on it to stop any possibility of a fire.

"Looks like drawing isn't something that you can do so fast, hermano," Jaime notes, amused at the thought of Bart doing anything slowly, "Otherwise we might have to call the fire department for some pre-emptive spraying."

Bart wrinkles his nose, the tip scrunching up and freckles gathering together, "I have to do it _slowly_?"

"It might do you good," Jaime raises an eyebrow, "You go through everything pretty fast."

"Yeah," Bart zips to Jaime's side and slings his arm around Jaime's shoulder, "Because otherwise, it's so _boring_. Doi."

Jaime rolls his eyes, "My point stands."

Bart sighs, dashes over to the couch and falls down on it. He accidentally hits his head on the armrest and rolls off the couch with a muffled _ow_ as he faceplants into the carpet. "But there's nothing interesting enough to capture my attention for that long." There's a long pause, and then Bart shoots up, almost hitting his head on the coffee table as he stares at Jaime, "I know! I'll draw _you_!"

Jaime blinks, eyes widening as the implications set in. "What... but I... I'm not..."

"You're _great_!" Bart cheers, and there's a bit of wind before Jaime is on the couch, and Bart sitting across from him, cross-legged on the floor as he holds up his sketchbook and commands Jaime, "Don't move an inch or else I'll eat all your dessert!"

Jaime raises an eyebrow, "You're going to do that whether or _not_ I move."

" _Shh_ ," Bart raises a finger to his lips and flashes Jaime a bright grin, "I don't know what you're talking about. You must be confusing me with someone else."

Jaime's eyebrow inches higher.

Bart pouts, deciding to switch tactics, "It was _strawberry cheesecake_! We don't have cheesecake in the future!"

"You _did_ have your _own_ cheesecake on your _own_ plate, though, if I recall correctly," Jaime huffs, crossing his arms over his chest and mock scowling.

Bart chews on the inside of his cheek, "So it's not okay to steal food?"

Jaime's mock scowl immediately washes off his lips, "It's not okay with anyone but me," He sighs, "With me, it's fine because we're friends and I'm not in danger of starving or anything like that. Although, you could just get a second cheesecake slice instead of making _me_ get myself a second cheesecake slice."

Bart's nervousness dissipates, leaving behind his wide grin, "Aw, but where's the fun in that?"

"I get to stay in my seat, enjoy my cheesecake," Jaime sighs at the thought, it seems so elusive and unreal after so much time with Bart stealing his dessert, "And you go run off all that excess energy of yours."

Bart hums to himself, "I _do_ like running." He pauses, and glares at Jaime, "Stop moving."

Jaime wiggles a bit, just to irritate Bart.

Bart _growls_.

Jaime laughs.

Jaime ends up being shown a picture of him crossing his arms over his chest and laughing at Bart. It's a strange image, and Bart blames him for it immediately.

"You kept moving," Bart sulks, and Jaime laughs.

"It's perfect, hermano," He slings an arm over Bart's shoulder and Bart smiles at him a little.

 _Yes,_ he thinks, listening to Bart balance between being flustered at Jaime's compliments towards the drawing and trying to stay angry at Jaime for moving so much, _this is perfect._


	2. Chapter 2

It's a Friday night when Jaime arrives at the Hall five minutes late.

This is a strange thing because of two reasons.

1\. Jaime is _never_ late. He's no Aqualad (who always arrives a few minutes early to discuss plans with Nightwing), but he's no slacker.

2\. Jaime doesn't actually have an excuse. Not a proper, I-was-late-because, excuse.

"I lost track of time," Jaime says apologetically, and Nightwing raises an eyebrow.

"But your phone didn't break," he says, confused.

Garth's brow furrows, "His _phone_? What does his _phone_ have to do with it?"

"He has an alarm on his phone set for meetings," Nightwing explained.

Jaime shuffled uncomfortably, "And you know that... how...?"

Nightwing started coughing violently.

" _Nightwing_ ," Aqualad frowned as he put a hand on Nightwing's shoulder, "You promised that you would stop hacking team mate's devices after the milkshake incident, remember?"

Nightwing poked his fingers together, "Okay, yeah, I know that I _said_ that I would, but this is really for the greater good, honestly, I mean, Jaime had the whole deal with the Reach and all, of _course,_ I had to gather information to see what was going on, you know, hacking is incredibly important for..." He trailed off weakly at Aqualad's unimpressed stare. "Okay, fine, so maybe I did it monthly, but I _need_ to do weekly checks on the team to ensure their..." More nervous laughter. "Okay."

Aqualad pursed his lips together disapprovingly.

"Okay, now that we've established that Nightwing likes to hack our phones on a monthly basis," Bart wrinkled his nose, "Totally did _not_ need to know that, BT-dubs," he flickered up to Jaime, "What's _this_?" Bart poked at Jaime's cheek, where an impressive bruise had spread across his jawline.

" _Ow_... hey, hermano, _not cool_!" Jaime batted Bart's arm away, irritated. "Dude, you don't _poke_ people's _bruises_! It's not cool!"

"Hm, that's totally mode," Bart moved his arm away obligingly, but began to examine it up close, "Dude, this is like, the hugest bruise that I've ever seen and I've seen Robin shirtless after a spar with Nightwing."

Nightwing froze, "Do I want to know why you saw that?"

"He used the change room, I used the change room," Bart raised an eyebrow, "In what other situation would I have seen Robin being shirtless?"

"Oh, uh," Nightwing coughed, and Robin punched him in the arm.

"Shut up," Robin muttered, and Nightwing immediately turned apologetic.

"Back to the bruise," Bart offered Jaime a lopsided grin, "What happened? Did you get into a fight? Beat up a gang?"

"Ugh, _hermano_ , have you heard of personal space?" Jaime put a hand on Bart's face and pushed him away slowly, "It's not a big deal. Can we move on to the mission, now?"

Nightwing flashed him a concerned look, but exchanged looks with Aqualad and sighed. "Yeah, okay, so the target today is..."

* * *

"Okay, but seriously, her-mano," Bart traced out a small circle with a pencil crayon on his sketchbook, "What's up?"

"Nothing's up," Jaime scowled as Bart started to fill in his face, "What makes you think that anything's up? Nothing's up."

"Right, right," Bart filled in the swoop of Jaime's nose, "But, like, _seriously_. Your bruise didn't come out of nowhere."

Jaime glowered. "It's not a big deal."

"Ooh, you just totally made a scary Bat face, didn't you?" Bart laughed as he began to outline Jaime's clothing, "The scary face totally means that there's more to the story."

"It also means bug off," Jaime crossed his arms over his chest.

"Dude, what did I tell you about moving?" Bart pouted, "Now I'm going to have to draw off of memory." Jaime pursed his lips together, utterly unapologetic. " _So_ mean," Bart continued dramatically, "Really awful. Moving like that when I was drawing your purple face. Making me _improvise_ based on _memory_. This is, like, the worst thing that you could ever do. Absolute worst. Stupid. Awful. Terrible..."

"Okay, cut it out!" Jaime snapped, "It's not that big of a deal, Bart!"

Bart paused mid-word, raising an eyebrow at Jaime, "Are we still talking about you moving while I'm drawing, or are we moving into you taking out your aggressions with that bruise out on me-type territory?"

"I'm... you're... _ugh_ ," Jaime huffed, "Would you give it a rest?"

"Hm," Bart hummed, tapping his pencil against his lower lip. "I mean, it depends. I mean, if you did something stupid and hurt yourself being an idiot, I _totally_ want some blackmail material." His expression hardened, "Or if someone did it to you, I need to know who to beat up." The darkened expression smoothed over into a wide grin, "But I'm mostly hoping for blackmail material."

Jaime started to fiddle with the bottom of his shirt, "Drop it, Bart. I already told you, it isn't a big deal."

"You wouldn't be avoiding it if it wasn't a big deal," Was Bart's rebuttal.

"Well, leave it," Jaime crossed his arms over his chest.

"But her-mano."

"Stop mispronouncing it."

"Her-mane-oh."

Jaime's eyebrow twitched.

"Him-yan-oh."

"You're doing this on purpose."

"Her-um-ey-oh."

Jaime buried his face in his hands, "Do you ever _stop_?"

"Nope!" Bart grinned, "I would if you told me how you got that bruise, though. Just one little answer and I'll leave you alone for ten minutes."

Jaime wrinkled his nose, "Ten minutes isn't very long."

"Well if I said forever, then I'd be a liar, and friends don't lie to each other, or maybe they do, but you got pretty mad at me the last time that I did that so you said to never do it again so I'm not but I _think_ that I can handle ten minutes I mean it's pretty long for me, if you think about it, really, and I honestly think that you should be truthful to me without me having to bother you because we're _friends_ , right?"

Jaime gaped at Bart. "You did not just use the 'friends' card on me."

"Okay, maybe I did, no biggie, because we are friends, so it's not manipulation or anything, just a reminder that we're _best buds_ who are _completely honest with each other_ and..."

"Give it a rest, Bart," Jaime grumbled.

"Tell me!" Bart pouted.

Jaime's jaw locked, " _Bart_."

" _Jaime_."

Jaime sighed and shook his head, "Leave it, okay?"

"If you don't tell me by the time that we're twenty, I'll stop bothering you."

Jaime crossed his arms over his chest, "Great. We'll reach twenty and I'll finally have some peace and quiet."

* * *

But, of course, that doesn't happen.

Since when does that ever happen?

Because the next week, the cave is attacked and Jaime goes down because his reaction time is slowed and Bart knows (they all know, really) that it's got something to do with the ugly scab growing on Jaime's temple.

Jaime wakes up, watching as Bart sketches in the quick details of his fingers before asking, "How long was I out?"

"An hour or so, no biggie, really," Bart reached out to press a finger against the skin beside Jaime's forehead, "Except, you know, this could totally have been avoided if you'd just, I dunno, stopped keeping quiet about this little thing here." He grins, wide and mischevious, the way that he always does when he's uncomfortable. "But maybe it's just me."

Jaime groans, "It's not a big deal."

"It is to me," Bart says quietly, stubbornly. "If it's not that big of a deal to you then can't you just leave it?"

"It's seriously nothing," Jaime turns on his side, raising an arm under his head to support it, "Just some neighbourhood kids got mad at me and I had to keep my cover. It's all, I promise."

"Just kids around the neighbourhood?" Bart frowns, "You need to defend yourself from getting this badly hurt. It interfered with the mission today."

Jaime's expression hardens, stubborn, "Yeah, I know, it's fine, I'll make sure I avoid them from now on."

" _Not_ what I meant," Bart huffs, "Make them stop."

The edges of Jaime's lips crinkle into a half smile, "It's not that easy, Bart."

"Well, just, beat 'em up or something!" Bart waved his hands in the air, "It's not that hard! You're a _superhero_ , for Blue Beetle's sake!"

Jaime ducked his head down, "I _am_ Blue Beetle."

"No you're not, you're... oh, right." Bart rubbed the back of his neck, "Oops. Awkward."

"It's fine," Jaime reassured Bart, though he still looked a bit off put. "But seriously, it's not big deal. If kids want someone to pound on because of their stupid prejudices, then it's no big deal."

"Prejudices?" Bart frowned and wiggled his toes, "Because they're racist? I thought that you lived in an area where minorities were the majority."

"I do, it's just," Jaime sighed, "It's just because they're homophobic, okay?"

"Oh," Bart started to sketch out Jaime's fingers again.

" _Oh_?" Jaime blinked, "That's it? Oh?"

"It's not a big deal," Bart chewed on his lower lip, "Right?"

Jaime blinked, "That's a pretty... wait, do you know what homophobic means?"

Bart winced.

"Geez, hermano, you can just ask me when something confuses you."

"I know, I know," Bart waved a hand, "So what does it mean?"

"Just that they're against anyone who doesn't like the opposite gender."

"So..." Bart tried (and failed miserably) not to look confused.

Jaime sighed and tried to summarize it simply. "I don't like girls, the neighbourhood kids don't like me."

"Oh," Bart drew his eyebrows together, "But you do like girls? I mean, you like Batgirl and Cassie and M'gann and..."

"No, I mean, _like like_."

Bart remained lost.

"Like... you know..." Jaime cleared his throat.

"I do not know, but thanks."

"Like, I don't like going out with them. Like, you know, uh, kissing and," Jaime was slowly turning red, "I don't know. I've never really done that kind of thing before, you know? I'm too young for it."

Bart chewed on his lower lips, thinking about it. "Like..." he drummed his fingers on the arms of the chair for a long time, thinking about it, and then lit up, "Oh! Like you don't want to have sex with girls?"

Jaime buried his face in his hands, " _Yes_. Geez, hermano, give a guy a bit of warning before you throw out a word like... you know..." he cleared his throat again.

Bart laughed, "You're so weird. Wow, I've heard that people in the past got to choose their sex partners but that's just such a weird concept, you know? It's crazy. Wild. In the future, the Reach always..." his smile drops a bit, "Yeah. Anyways. That's pretty cool. How do you pick? Genetics? Strength? Appearance?"

"Personality," Jaime smiles a bit.

"Personality?" Bart's forehead wrinkles, "But that's not... that doesn't produce the most genetically efficient humans."

"It's not about being genetically efficient," Jaime agreed, "It's just about wanting to be closer to someone."

"Oh," Bart filled in the shadows, the blanket's shadow on the pillow and Jaime's chin shadowing his neck. " _Crash_. So crash. That's... wow. I never thought..." he taps his pencil against his sketchbook, "But then why were the kids mad? If you choose your sex partner based on personality?"

Jaime groaned, " _Please_ stop saying sex partner. And right now, if it's not someone of the opposite gender, it's typically kind of, uh, looked down upon, so..."

"I see," Bart frowned, "That's totally mode."

"Yeah," Jaime laughed, "Are you done drawing me? Do I get to see the picture yet? Oh, or even better... do I get to move yet?"

"You can never move," Bart cackled.

"Dude!"

(Jaime doesn't come into the cave with bruises anymore. This has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Bart kindofmaybesortofnotreally stalks him. Not that he's overprotective. This is totally normal. Yeah. People in the future do it all the time. Obviously. Um.)

* * *

 **A/N:** Yes, Jaime's gay. Am I shipping Bart and Jaime? No. I have difficulty writing romantic relationships, so you can feel free to see it as something that will happen after this fic, but it will not happen during this fic. I just believe that you can have a gay character without them needing a love interest, and I personally headcanon that Jaime's gay, thus.


End file.
